Police suspect parents may have killed three-day-old infant girl, launch hunt for person seen throwing body in bin in south Mumbai

mumbaiUpdated: Nov 28, 2017 16:12 IST

Megha Sood

Hindustan Times

he police have recovered CCTV footage in which they spotted the blurred image of a man approaching the bin and allegedly throwing a plastic bag in it. (HT File)

The police have launched a massive manhunt to find the man who dumped the body of a three-day old newborn girl at Ballard Pier on Sunday.

The MRA Marg police have filed a case of murder and are trying to determine the identity of the infant. Officials had detained two people on suspicion, but they have been released after interrogations.

The police recovered CCTV footage from a camera placed just a few metres away from the bin, in which they spotted a blurred image of a man approaching the bin and allegedly throwing a plastic bag in it. “We suspect that the man killed the baby and dumped her body,” said an officer from MRA Marg police station, requesting anonymity.

“Based on CCTV recordings, we detained two men who matched the image, but we released them as they are not involved,” said Manoj Kumar Sharma, deputy commissioner of police (zone I).

Sharma said three police teams are working to determine the infant’s identity and to trace the accused.

Police officials said they found the body after a shopkeeper, who went to the garbage bin to discard waste, spotted a roundish object in a polythene bag and called the police control room. After the shopkeeper reported it as something that looked suspiciously like a human organ, police and civic officers reached the spot and took charge of the bag, and discovered a newborn girl’s body.

The body was sent to the St. George hospital for post-mortem. “Based on the post-mortem, we have registered a case of murder against an unidentified person. Blood stains were found on the baby’s neck, suggesting that she was tortured before she was choked to death with a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth,” the officer said.

The police have sent the handkerchief to the Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Kalina. The baby had been healthy and was born at the end of the full term, they said.

The police believe that it is either a case of female infanticide or of unwanted pregnancy, and also suspect that the infant’s parents might have killed her after delivery, as the umbilical cord was not cut. “The delivery was not done in any hospital as the umbilical cord was uncut,” said Sukhlal Verpe, senior police inspector of MRA Marg police station.